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One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.

V. S. Pritchett

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V. S. Pritchett
Age: 96 †
Born: 1900
Born: December 16
Died: 1997
Died: March 20
Biographer
Critic
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Ipswich (parish)
Best
Dramatic
Self
Impulse
Great
Pity
Much
Potential
Depends
Emotion
Creative
Sellers
Upon
Recalls

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It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.
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A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
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The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.
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Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
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The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths.
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[London] is sentimental and tolerant. The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: Dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters interesting.
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How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.
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We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.
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I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose lives were governed by ideas alien to mine.
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It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent but there is talent in the tongues.
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Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.
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Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.
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I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.
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On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.
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Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.
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Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.
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A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.
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The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the lady is not at home, and he can spend his life preparing without fuss for the awful interview.
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It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?
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The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.
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